Personal records of 30,000 US Department of Defense workers were stolen by hackers

Hackers have reportedly stolen personal information of 30,000+ US Department of Defense workers. Confidential sources from the Pentagon in Washington DC have declared that hackers were able to access department travel records from where they have been able to retrieve personal information of government employees like names, dates of birth, and credit card numbers. Until now US military spokesperson was silent, not being able to confirm or comment the claims.

This theft affected both military and civilian workers, and current estimates are showing that 30,000+ workers have their info retrieved by the hackers. Remember everything can be hacked. In order to stay away from any threats related to the cyber world, we recommend the install of antivirus for Windows or antivirus for Mac on every device that you own, depending on which OS your device is running. If you are a company, it is also recommended to hire every year a specialized cybersecurity company that will run annual tests on your company’s network. These tests include penetration testing and ethical hacking tests;

The data theft occurred not within the Pentagon itself, the hit was made on a third-party vendor that uses the data to book travel. It’s important to understand that this was a breach of a single commercial vendor. The same vendor will ensure that notifications are made to the affected personnel. A new 10-year $10bn JEDI contract program will be started by the DoD. This new program will lunch a major reorganization of its IT operations. Cloud vendors will be eliminated or merged in a single vendor that will have the task of creating a new cloud system to handle operations for the entire department.

The outside vendor would be tangled up in the theft of personally sensitive information because the Pentagon looks to offload the bulk of its agency and employee data to another third party with JEDI. Still, a mere of 30,000 personnel records are now available to hackers but this breach is not even close to breach in which 20 million-plus records were stolen by the Chinese hackers in the 2015 OPM mega-hack.

We would continue to monitor this cybersecurity problem. Meanwhile, users should keep a keen eye out for any cyber attacks. Remember to use an antivirus for Windows or antivirus for Mac in every device that you own, depending on which OS your machine is running, If you are a company we recommend to hire every year a specialized cybersecurity company that will run annual tests on your company’s network, tests like this include: penetration testing and ethical hacking.